Just got back yesterday from the Bow-Yoho Traverse with a fellow ski candidate. The climb up the Collie Icefall was decently straightforward straight up the middle of the slope, and had enough coverage that we saw a guided group do some laps next to the skin track. Coverage on ice along the route averaged 2-2.5m with many places being deeper. We decided to take a look at the summit ridge of Collie, and found the 'usual' double corniced ridge blocking further ascent from the saddle at 3050m. We decided to give it a miss since the south face had been baking in the sun all day by the time we got there around 2pm. We used the route described by the Banff Public Safety crew in an earlier post, skirting a nunatak and steep slope to gain a small col at GR 296157 and then working down the ridge to the south to access the hut.
The new Guy hut is great, but it's a good idea to make sure everyone in your whole group knows the lock code, since the door can shut and lock behind you when you say... go out to the outhouse in the middle of the night. There is a good bench that gives access to the Des Poilus glacier off the west side of the ridge that the new hut is on. The ski off of the Des Poilus glacier requires some caution. There is a decent sized lake at the toe of the glacier that is not on the maps for the route. There is also a 12-15m ice cliff at the toe of the glacier on the edge of the lake that faces south and is not immediately apparent if you are scouting the route from the new hut. It would be very unfortunate to ski off this feature in a whiteout. The glacier is best exited on the skiiers left side, where the cliff is smallest.
We ascended Isolated Col without much concern, however the high pressure warm temps and bluebird skies on the 22nd resulted in a 5cm thick sun crust with 2cm of dust overlying on the south side of the col. There were also several wet slides (size 1) that had come out of the south facing cliffs on the skiiers right side of the col that ran into the ski line. The skiing down to the Stanley Mitchell hut was marginal on this crust, which didn't lose much strength even on lower angled slopes. My suspicion is that this crust will be an interface of concern in the near future, if not beyond. When we skiied away from the Little Yoho valley it was snowing S2 at noon on top of that crust. The ski out past Tak Falls on the road was slow due to moist snow below 1750m. Attached are photos of the summit ridge of Collie, the ice cliffs on the toe of the Des Poilus and what the President glacier looked like on the 22nd

Will Woods
ACMG HG